City: Gary, Indiana

Reporting to: Director of Community Development

The Challenge

In 1906, Gary, Indiana, was incorporated as a company town to serve the United States Steel Corporation’s steel mills. Like many other Rust Belt cities, Gary’s thriving steel industry was affected by the disappearance of local manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, leading to depopulation. Since 1960, the city has lost 61% of its population and has just under 70,000 residents. Located about 25 miles southeast of Chicago with direct access to five miles of recreational beach on Lake Michigan, the city has a unique history with an opportunity to grow in the coming years. As one of the nation’s cities with the consistently largest Black population per capita, the city elected the nation’s first Black mayor (Richard Hatcher) in 1967 and hosted the first and largest National Black Political Convention in 1972. It is the hometown of the Jackson 5 family and boasts several pieces of impressive architecture, including two houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In Gary, population loss, a series of zoning changes, and the unsuccessful and corrupt program of the Gary Urban Enterprise Association have been longstanding barriers to residential development. To revitalize neighborhoods across the city, Mayor Eddie D. Melton is committed to several different neighborhood revitalization programs, rebuilding the city one community at a time. Following recent success in addressing blight in Aetna, one of Gary’s downtown districts, the city just launched Gary First, a targeted neighborhood revitalization program to address blight and foster homeownership in Emerson, Gary’s downtown district. Emerson has many vacant lots and abandoned buildings and the lowest number of housing units in the city. At the same time, Emerson is home to city hall, the baseball stadium, and offers great connectivity to Chicago through the train station. By leveraging affordable housing incentives and prioritizing city employees, the initiative seeks to rebuild community pride and improve housing stock while determining best practices to replicate success in other neighborhoods.

Many families cannot secure housing because of cost. Additionally, neighborhoods like Emerson are currently blighted because those willing to improve them do not have the resources. This program will ensure housing for Gary’s residents first with support from the city to improve the housing stock.

The summer fellow will work alongside the Director of Redevelopment and City Planner as a project manager and community liaison to support the Gary First Initiative. The fellow will help us address the following key questions:

1. How can the city optimize incentives to attract and retain participants in the Gary First program?
2. What are the barriers to scaling the initiative in Emerson and beyond?
3. How do we ensure long-term sustainability and resident engagement after properties are restored?
4. What innovative financing or partnership models can be applied to strengthen the program?
5. How can city employees and other key groups be engaged as ambassadors of the program?

What You’ll Do

To address these questions, the fellow will engage key stakeholders, including:

• Internal stakeholders: Community Development Director, City Planner, Director of Redevelopment, and Planning/Zoning staff.
• External stakeholders: Construction contractors, public stakeholders, University of Notre Dame partners, and banks supporting the initiative.
• Community stakeholders: City employees and prospective buyers engaged in the program.

The fellow’s work can help us better understand prospective buyers (many of whom will be city employees), which will lead to improvements to our long-term program strategy. This project will prepare the city to launch similar initiatives in other neighborhoods in the future. Based on these two aspects, we expect the following deliverables:

1. Conducting a comprehensive analysis of best practices from similar city initiatives and contextualizing them for Gary.
2. Engaging with prospective buyers and stakeholders to develop:
   • A journey map detailing the applicant process
   • Demographic insights and support needs of applicants
   • Recommendations for critical success factors
3. Developing a strategic plan with success metrics for Emerson and future neighborhoods, including:
   • A data collection framework for program evaluation
   • Recommendations for contractor and bank partnerships
   • Criteria for prioritizing neighborhoods in subsequent phases
4. Delivering a final presentation and report to Mayor Melton summarizing findings and recommendations.

What You’ll Bring

• Stakeholder engagement
• Data analysis
• Design thinking
• Mapping (GIS)
• Qualitative interviewing and analysis
• Language fluency in Spanish (preferred)